The Mosquito, A Youth Deterrent System

Well, Holy Jeevus and such. I saw this a while back, and at the time, thought it was some guy’s personal contraption. Little did I know that they were actually being sold!

I’m talking about The Mosquito, also known as the Ultrasonic Annoying-Emo-Teen Deterrent. It’s a special speaker that emits sounds at high frequencies. It’s ultimate goal: to annoy the crap out of those pesky kids hanging out in front of your store and scaring customers away. It works by broadcasting unpleasing sounds at a frequency that can be heard by younger people only. It has an effective range of about 20 meters.

It seems that as you age, you become unable to hear higher frequencies. This is called presbycusis or age related hearing loss, and is the key to this system’s success.

It’s been installed and used with great results in many places in the UK, and has been described as ?the most effective tool in our fight against anti social behaviour?. Oh, and it doesn’t bother dogs, apparently.

Uh huh. Well, annoying the kids away will cost you a pretty penny, though, with the system starting at ?495.

Mosquito is a deterent, nothing else. It will penetrate IPODs which has been proven. The fact is while you are getting hassel or vandalism some other shopkeeper or boozer isnt!! Try it….. if I had trouble with youths outside my premises I would normally go out and give them a telling off, later that night they would probably smash the crap out of my property. Using this device will be a none confrontational way of dealing with things!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whomite

I dont mind the idea of these devices being installed on shops to deterr large groups I live in a peacful neighbourhood and one of the houses near me has got one of these devices installed and now i dont get a wink of sleep when my windows are open. it drives me insane. I cant go into my room and have a window open without hearing that noise. I think these devices should be for shop use only otherwise if large numbers of houses get them some people wont even feel comfortable walking down the street.

Isn’t it great that here we see a bunch of gits doing all they can to assault, torrment and alienate our youth. This device is banned in R.O.I. under the Non Fatal Assault Act 1997 and is being reviewed under the Human Rights Act. These people who this is aimed at are the adults of tommorrow, the people who will be earning the money these evil little shop owners will want to prise out of their pockets, what a bunch of evil small minded people we are as a society. Lets alienate all the youth of today so that the adults of tommorrow will hate us and this society, that should really help sort things out. Is this really the way forwards, are we really going to allow a small minority to torment and assault our children like this with these awful devices, which appear to not actually work and have no scientific backing what so ever, in fact it does not even have a health and safety rating, does anyone know how this effects babies. As it is sold on the basis that as we age our hearing weakens, this is of course false, think about bats with their iddy biddy ear drums and ears like elephants to hear the sounds they use to navigate, do teens have ears like elephants, and if a baby has the smallest of human eardrums this sound should be agony for them, nice.
This is a snake oil device that has had zero testing, it has been shown and admited by the inventor of this device that the same pest deterent devices do not work on rats or mice… so now he is trying to sell it to the world as teen tormentor, just the name makes me feel sick, so it wont deter rats or mice but claims it works on teens…I dont think so. In 1974 the US Army tried such devices to control crowds and guess what… none of the devices worked and the project was scrapped, this is just another case of the “emporor has no clothes” and Howard Stapleton is a fraud.

Nyaro

I’m 19, and I was watching a news channel a moment ago that was talking about this device. They played the sound for probably about 30 seconds and now my head hurts and my ears are very uncomfortable (“popping” non-stop, like they would on a plane). (I can easily imagine losing my hearing if I listened to that noise too much) I don’t think this device is very fair. I mean, this device was being used in the lobby of an apartment building when they were talking about it on the news, and young people live in that apartment, so they have to deal with it on a regular basis. The only place I can really think of that might want to use it (where young people aren’t normally customers) would perhaps be a bar, but if you’re 21 and can hear the noise, it would stop you from going. I suppose people could use it in stores and such at night, but they don’t appear to be just using them at night.

I call this discrimination. Not all young people are drug addicts and criminals. In fact, I would say very few out of the total number are this way. The way to deal with them is not to make them lose their hearing prematurely, but to find some other way that’s not going to affect their health.

I realize that people do have problems with teens loitering and such, but anyone of any age could be giving people the same problems and this thing supposedly doesn’t work on anyone over the age of 25.

I do not want to hear this noise again. I hope it’s unlikely I will, because I do not loiter, do drugs, or steal from people, but what if I just want to go to a friend’s apartment, or I want to go to the store and this device is in one of those places? I would be exposed to the noise again, and for no reason.

I see it as a form of discrimination. Just because I am of a certain age, the people who install these devices assume that I am a vandal? We have one installed outside and all around a local shopping centre. I cant spend any time around that shopping centre, I’m 21 and not likely to go smashing windows.
The only problem is, because it only effects the youths of this nation, who are below voting age, it is not seen as a pressing issue in government to ban them.
I do feel sorry for the perfectly innocent youths who are effected by this. I used to be a security guard and part of my job was to ensure that no one was in store under the age of 16 and not accompanied by an adult, this was due to health and safety issues, however, the management and myself saw it acceptable to allow under 16’s into the store without an adult accompanying them, as long as they were causing no trouble.
From my experience, I had far more problems from disgruntled customers who could not have a refund than youths in my store, we must bear in mind that the majority of youths are innocent, its just the small minority that cause problems.
I can totally understand how a large group of youths can be very intimidating, but large groups of middle aged drunk people can but just as if not more intimidating. A lot of towns now have dispersal orders, which I see as infinitely more appropriate than these devices. They allow police officers to disperse large groups of any age group, not only this but it allow a human being (namely a police officer) to assess the situation and the threat of violence or anti social behaviour, therefore it is non discriminating. I amazed to hear that the dispersal orders were far more controversial than these devices?

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